Which Jobs Offer Best Prospects

The recession has churned Minnesota's job market to the point where some jobs have all but evaporated while others are surfacing as top prospects for the future. Now, counselors like Hover - the college's director of career and employment services - are stressing more than ever before that no one should take the past as a promise a job will be there in the future.

What's dropping out of Minnesota's labor economy is the middle. Gone are the old days when a kid could graduate high school or even drop out early, land work at the nearest factory or mine, train on the job and settle in for a reasonably good life - a paycheck big enough to meet the mortgage with something left over for a pickup, a fishing boat and family vacations.

Thousands of jobs Minnesota has lost in manufacturing - machinist work, welding and soldering, tool and dye making, electronic assembling and machine tool setting - aren't coming back. Instead, the state should brace to lose even more jobs in those fields.

One of many reasons the polarization is so worrisome for workers and the state's overall economy too is that the jobs that are disappearing pay about $15 to $20 an hour. For unskilled workers, they likely will be replaced with jobs paying $10 to $12.

Machinists, for example, currently earn about $19 an hour in Minnesota. The state faces the loss of 400 of those jobs over the next four years. A machinist would have to take two jobs in property-association management paying $9.67 an hour - to pocket the same wages. Home health care aides do just slightly better, earning $11.72 an hour.

In an article about workers the recession is leaving permanently behind, the New York Times recently profiled an administrative assistant from Jacksonville, Fla.

In Minnesota, jobs for executive secretaries and administrative assistants are poised to grow, not shrink. According to the EMSI projections, the state will add nearly 5,000 jobs in that category over the next four years - about an 8 percent growth. Still, the point the Times was making applies here too: Some jobs never will come back. And that's as true in the office as it is on the factory floor. One reason administrative assistants remain in demand is that their duties have shifted as technology revolutionized offices.

To be sure, their bosses dictate far fewer formal letters and instead peck out quick emails on Blackberries and laptops. But the administrative assistant who kept pace with technology has plenty of work to do in archiving and retrieving data, preparing Power Point presentations for the boss and booking quick travel arrangements online.

Even in a secure occupation, a worker can invite trouble by failing to keep technical skills up to date, said Daniel Wagner, a consultant to MnSCU and other clients through the Minnesota Future Work program

Believe it or not, manufacturing even could be a promising field for workers who upgrade technical skills and education - especially those who know how to operate and repair sophisticated computer-controlled machinery, Wagner said. "The Minnesota manufacturing industry is alive and healthy, but it is decreasing in employment numbers," he said. At the same time, a generation of trained workers is approaching retirement, and manufacturers are "going to have a tremendous need for technical trained workers," he said.

The recession's biggest blows are behind us now. And companies are at a point where they should start hiring because the use of temporary help nationwide recently has spurted up - even higher than during the leading edge of recovery from the 2001 recession.

Job hunters would be wise, though, to consider taking internships and temporary contract jobs where "the employer gets to see you and try you out," Wagner said.

The industries that held steady through the worst of the recession, he said, are the ones now poised to lead us to recovery: health care, social assistance and scientific and technical jobs. Education should be a leader too although that sector has been crimped by budget problems in state and local government.

Some jobs on Wagner's good-prospects list include:

• Computer security and other scientific-technical work
• Almost any health-related occupation
• Accountants and auditors (In the wake of financial scandals, companies are pressed to be more vigilant and transparent.)
• Management analysts (Companies know they need to stay lean to survive.)

One enduring lesson from the recession is that workers are going to have to be more flexible and creative, said Hover, the career director at Inver Hills Community College. "Even during the recession, I have seen students getting jobs," she said. "Those were the people who thought creatively about where to find work."

Source: Minnpost.com, Sharon Schmickle, 6/10/10